The Arrangement

 …"Maybe, but that has nothing to do with the fact that you need some good old fashioned discipline." "Yes, well you’d have to catch me first."

I was sitting in the coffee shop sipping my iced latte' and writing lesson plans for my assistant teacher who would be stepping up to my position when the summer break was over. For three years I had been teaching kindergarten and was having a hard time imagining my days without the laughter of children, or the abundance of finger paint under my nails, and my heart sank at the idea of leaving Storytime in the hands of someone else. I'd had an overwhelming amount of things going on and stress was weighing on me. My best friend encouraged me to take some time off and I found life to be more fun when I followed her advice. She and I had become fast friends in high school when she moved here after losing her family in a fatal car accident. We shared secrets, ate ice-cream out of the carton together when boys broke our hearts, we laughed together, cried together, traveled together, and I can't think of an adventure I'd been on or an important milestone in my life when she wasn't there. All of my best memories include her. I was counted as family, her only family really. We were inseparable and closer than sisters. We knew everything about each other and had accepted one another without judgment. I considered her the one and only person in my world that had truly loved me unconditionally. Now she was heading out on a horseback riding tour that she had been excited about for months.